


ten days to tempest

by jideni3



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 02, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, author is a mess, they're kids and friends first so the most they do is blush a bit tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2019-11-23 10:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18150635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jideni3/pseuds/jideni3
Summary: “You impudent little mongrel.” -Lord Viren, S1E01The spell worked, and it felt right after an entire lifetime of everything feeling wrong, and he was - is - the wing. Rayla leads the journey into Xadia - Zym's throne, her redemption, and his life on the line - and Callum tries and fails to ignore the growing itch on his back, the building charge in his heart, and the fact that no matter how he tries, eidetic memory or not, he can't for the life of him remember his first father's face.





	1. Chapter 1

Breaking the primal sphere shouldn’t have been that easy. He had protected it throughout their journey, had grown attached to the clean glass and electric energy trapped inside, had celebrated finally discovering a skill that could actually be useful to his fellow travelers - and in a heartbeat, acting almost on instinct, he’d taken it in his hand and smashed it against packed earth as forcefully as he could.

He’d thought he’d be sad seeing the only special thing about him dissolve into air and cloud. Instead, as he watched lightning stretch towards the sky and tempest winds rip at his hair, he was filled with an unperturbed sense of calm.

The gale winds had thrown him to the ground and ripped Rayla off her feet, and Ezran’s little hands had clutched at his shirt, and Callum’s heart had beat painfully, cruelly hard, to the point where it felt like his own pulse was choking him - and buried somewhere in the back of his mind was a thread of relief that he didn’t have the wherewithal to acknowledge. The skies were inverting themselves in pure storm, and buried under a thick layer of terror and worry was a seed of belonging that went wholly unnoticed.

The cracking of the glass mirrored the cracking of the egg, and Ezran, Rayla, and Callum gathered to welcome Azymondias into the world. Rayla’s hands shook, and Ezran’s voice swelled with joy, and Callum took a breath deeper and clearer than any breath he’d taken before, so utterly relieved that - despite everything - they were still alive. There should have been a ribbon of mourning for the primal sphere weaving itself through his thoughts. Instead, there was a bewildering sense of release.

In the happy chaos of the next few hours, he thought nothing of it.

___

Somewhere between the arrival of Zym and Lujanne’s arrest-worthy breakfast, an ache appears. It grows and manifests in the spaces between his fingers and the gaps in his ribs, tightening every time he takes a breath, so he pesters Lujanne about magic and humans and arcanum and the moon and steadfastly inhales against the vice around his chest, in and out, following the memory of his mother’s voice. Lujanne humors him, Claudia devastates him, and Rayla follows him like a shadow as he breathes and thinks of King Harrow and Ezran and about how they’re not ready for this. The ache is lost in the wound left by the news of King Harrow’s death.

He cries. Between eating and drawing and failing to impart the news to Ezran, he cries a lot and sometimes wheezes into his knees while his mother chants _breathe, just breathe_ and she’s dead, just like Harrow, and how the hell is he supposed to breathe when they’re dead and gone and Ezran is _ten_? But somehow he does, stumbling to his feet after an hour of sobbing to wash his face and put a cold towel over his eyes to ease the swelling, and if Rayla distracts Ezran before he can get too curious about Callum’s sudden penchant for naps, well, it’s neither here nor there.

The ache is folded into the whole-body bruise of grief, and lost in the bitter bite of betrayal when Claudia and Soren prove to be what Rayla had said they were all this time. She’s kind enough not to rub it in his face, perhaps because she finds it more fun to mock his admittedly dismal attempts at meditation. He makes sure to hum extra loud, and pretends he isn’t pathetically grateful for her exaggerated groan of disgust.

Phoe-Phoe falling out of the sky kind of sucks, but then they’re on a boat with a blind guy who cycles through levels of consciousness like Bait cycles through colors, so Callum faces the wind and tries to forget Harrow’s words burning a hole through his satchel. Villads talks about the wind and the sea and of storms and of paths, and Rayla plasters herself to various surfaces of the deck in a misery, and Callum eventually heads below deck to nurse his indecisiveness.

Harrow calls him son and Callum is bowed by grief and love and the clamp around his lungs. Harrow says he’s proud of him, that he sees himself in Callum, that he’ll watch over Callum and Ezran alongside Sarai. Callum wipes his face, gives Bait an overdue belly rub, and goes up to hug his baby brother.

Rayla lies flat on the dirt when they finally ground, her front entirely covered in dust, earth, and dried grass, and Ezran thinks she’s onto a grand idea and rolls down himself, with Bait and Zym mirroring him, and for a moment it’s just Callum staring down at his prone friends while they act like the children they are. Rayla is burdened with a truly unfortunate amount of common sense though, and soon thereafter they’re on their way to the Xadian border.

___

The whole fiasco with the dragon is a _mess_ , and yeah, on the one hand, Rayla is absolutely right, they shouldn’t leave a powerfully magical creature at the hands a group of scared, armed, stab-happy humans, but on the other hand, what the hell are they supposed to do? Rayla is one elf. Granted, she’s fast, but she’s one person against an entire team, and holy cow _Soren_ and _Claudia_ are there, when did that happen - and everybody else is too young or too, dammit, too-

(the book is very, very heavy, like it’s actively resisting the act of being picked up)

The grubs are easy to find, they so love to cluster up in the damp underneath rocks, and he chooses the biggest one he can see, just in case its size translates to more power. Maybe size doesn’t correlate at all and he’s just wasting precious seconds, but Rayla is in there, and Claudia has too many years of skill and experience, and he can’t afford to mess this one up.

(the book drags his arm down, pulling him towards the earth, but he holds his breath and hefts it up, sliding as quiet as he can towards the clearing where he can hear Rayla’s twin blades clashing against chains)

Claudia yells for him to stop (opening the book is so easy) because he’s never been trained, never been taught (the script reads itself, each word jumping off the page and burying itself behind his eyes, burning and unforgettable) and he could get hurt as a result, could get seriously messed up if he does it wrong without someone to guide him.

(the words slide down the backs of his eyes to fill his mouth, thick and twisted and bubbling with the taste of rot). “You already did,” he says, before the words crowd his mouth and force their way out, his left hand clenching down to kill the grub. Its tiny life ends, squeezed out by his fingers, the words on his lips reaching out to shape and mold its ghost into something that can enervate chains. It leaves his hands in a blinding green rush, taking with it the grub’s life and any breath he had left in his lungs, before slamming into the dragon’s chains and animating them to attack the guards. Callum inhales - the taste of rot in his mouth - tries to exhale, can’t - (the book slips through his fingers, thuds into the grass next to his stumbling feet) his knees bend of their own accord-

___

The ache is fierce, angry to have been forgotten, stabbing into the spaces of his spine and circling around his rib cage to press down and _squeeze squeeze squeeze_ , like how he squeezed the grub, like how he stole its life the way this ache steals his air.

His mirror tells him to choose breathlessness and Harrow _(dad)_ tells him to choose his own future, irrespective of what others say, what history says, and he loves his dad so so much, he loves him _so_ _goddamn much_ -

\- and then he’s

\- drowning -

\- ice water and salt, rot and slime in his lungs, he can’t breathe, there’s water in his lungs, an ocean, he’s _drowning_ -

\- his mother telling him, _talk to me, breathe. breathe, callum._

everything

together

(it’s all so much, mom)

**connects**

___

He opens his eyes.

He breathes.

___

Ezran knows, and then Ezran leaves, so Zym, Rayla, and Callum have to cross the _burning molten lava path_ without him and Callum can’t decide if he’s happy or grieved about it. Of course, it’s easier to run across now, with the ache gone (and wow, but he hadn’t noticed how constant the ache had been until it was finally gone and he could inhale without having to fight for every breath, it’s amazing, liberating, freeing-) so he trips his way after Rayla as she charts a path across a literal sea of fire, cherishing every burning mouthful of air.

Then the sun hides the path, because of course it couldn’t be easy, of _course_ they couldn’t just have one measly night where things went right - but Zym spreads his wings (and makes a sound altogether identical to the sound Ezran used to make when he’d jump on Callum’s bed at 6am to play, all those years ago) and Callum breathes in with his lungs, digs down to his heart, reaches out to the sky, and gives Zym all the air in his body with a soft, “ _Aspiro”_.

Zym looks so funny with his little wings all raised up to blot out the sun, all imperious and proud, as if anything that small could be so important. Callum thinks of Ezran and hugs Rayla and laughs and does NOT cry. Like, at all.

They walk, and the sun shines, and Callum sweats while Rayla beams, and then she throws her arms up to the sky and spins around on one foot and says, “This is it, Callum!” and her grin is so wide, her eyes are so bright. “Xadia!”

Callum stares up at the sky. He stares some more. He might have gasped, because Rayla whirls around and follows his gaze, and manages a small, “Oh no.”

Nobody has a panic attack. Small victories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah hey guys idk where i'm going with this, when i'll update, or if i'll finish it but hey!!! im apologizing in advance!! 
> 
> this first chap is just a brief summary/recap that i started writing in 2018, and s2 bashed my skull in and had me writing this out on my phone on the bus at 5am in the morning, so that's that on that. next chapter is more in-line with a story (dialogue and EVERYTHING) and everything after that is a wip so lmao cross ur fingers!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> april fools! the joke is i updated faster than i said i would, or ever will again, never expect this from me. anyways here u go

Sol Regem is a _big_ bastard.

Sol Regem is a big SMART bastard. With good eyes. Real good eyes.

_“How did you forget to mention-”_

“It’s not that I _forgot_ to mention-”

“- _the big hulking dragon king guy-”_

“-he’s usually not HERE - I mean, I mean he _is_ here, but not _here_ here-”

“-the size, Rayla, _the size of a castle_ -”

“OKAY.” She brings her hands down onto his shoulders and stares hard at him, like she can will calm into his head. Fat luck. “Shut up, that mouth.”

His mouth snaps shut.

“Okay. Ooooookay.” She seems to be struggling to find words, which is fine with him, because his thoughts are electricity and chaos right now and all he can focus on are how big those teeth seem from all the way over here.

She half leads, half drags him behind one of the slightly taller rocky growths jutting out of the landscape, Zym close behind. They huddle down, Rayla's teeth worrying at her lip while Callum tried not to explode. She takes in a deep breath, holds it. He sweats.

“We have to lie low,” she finally says. Her voice does not shake, and it’s very impressive. “We can’t let him notice us - I mean, I would be in enough trouble as it is, being out here without an escort, but _you_ -you would definitely die.”

“You’re amazing at being reassuring, really, the comfort is phenomenal.”

“I’m serious Callum!” Oh, now there’s an actual tremor in her voice, and yeah, his knees might be shaking. “Regem watches over the borders to make sure nobody gets in or out without proper escorts, and, and the escorts have to activate their abilities full out at _all_ times in order to pass through this land safely, or else he flies down and checks, and sometimes-” she drops to a hiss, “-sometimes not so nicely.”

Callum wipes at his forehead and peers at her. “What do you mean, ‘not so nicely?’”

“I mean he roasts first and asks questions later.”

He can feel the heat rising out of the baked earth through the soles of his shoes. “Roasts like - a sharp dressing-down?”

Her voice is a graveyard. “Like a flametorch.”

He lets his head thump down on her shoulder, and she allows it because she’s the best. “I figured.” And damn, if this isn’t the kind of high-stakes life-threatening nonsense he thought he would thrive in when this whole adventure first started. He could kick himself. “What do we do now, then?”

Rayla is quiet while she thinks, and Callum chances a peek around the stone pillar to the dragon, who is just way too big, and way too scary. It’s too far too see with any degree of accuracy, but he thinks the dragon’s gaze is turned elsewhere, to the left and towards the sun, almost like a giant, murderous flower. It’s still for a few seconds longer while Rayla mumbles behind him, and then with an abrupt snap it’s wings unfold - and _wow_ but they’re gorgeous, bright and red the way Zym’s wings are moonpale - and it launches itself into the sky, regal and fatally powerful.

Callum pivots and grabs at Rayla. “It’s flying, it’s leaving-”

She pushes his head down with an absent hand and peeks over the top of his hair. “Oh good,” she says, and for once it doesn’t sound a single bit sarcastic. “I think he’s going out to meet one of the weekly escorts.”

“How long do you think it will take him?”

“If the escort is close, under an hour. If the escort just breached the sun-wards though, the blessing might take upwards of two.”

Not bad. The expanse between where they’re standing and the outcrop where Sol Regem had been guarding is crossable if they book it fast enough. He says as much and Rayla nods. “I can run faster than you can. I’ll-no, shut up, I’m right and you know it - I’ll run ahead and make sure the path is clear. This area doesn’t get too many wild creatures with Sol keeping watch, but even the weaker creatures can slow us down if we’re not careful. You take Zym - you can give him a boost if he needs to fly faster.”

“What if Sol Regem comes back?” He can picture it in crystal clarity, Sol’s enormous shadow engulfing Rayla before a column of flame incinerates her. “What if he tries to kill you while you’re ahead?”

Rayla smiles at him. “It’s only humans he kills immediately.”

The comfort is _astounding_.

__

When Rayla had first said she could outrun him, he’d been somewhat affronted. Granted, it was a very real and true observation, and had been proven multiple times throughout the course of their journey together, but she didn’t have to open her mouth and _say it_ with words and everything - she could have lied with the kindness of her elf heart or whatever. Now though -

\- sweat streams into his eyes and stings them shut, plasters his tunic to his back and makes his clothes heavy, his mouth is pure sand -

\- now he sort of wishes he could lie down and sleep his way across the scorched expanse.

There aren’t even plants around. It’s that hot.

“Zym,” he gasps. He’s past the point where he feels embarrassed about how winded he sounds. “You holding up okay?”

Zym’s tiny shadow glides above him, bolstered by the intermittent _Aspiros_ he provides whenever Zym strays too close to the ground. A chirp cheerfully answers his question, and Callum trudges on. The heat has his speed down to power-walking. Awful.

Rayla is a blur of blue, black, and silver up ahead, her hair catching the sun and shining like a shard of broken mirror. She’ll dart forward and pause before approaching a pillar or boulder, edging forward with her blades raised up in front of her like shields. A scan of the area to confirm they're the only ones around, and then she's off again to the next big rock, banging the flat side of her blade against the rock every to make a high _ting_ noise, which at first sounded kind of cool but quickly became annoying after the thirtieth wack. He would ask her what the hell she's doing it for - it’s giving him a headache, and aren't they supposed to be laying low?- but that would require a level of oxygen that he lost a mile and a gallon of sweat ago.

To distract himself from the truly criminal amount of water he's lost so far, he closes his eyes - briefly, he's not suicidal - reaches down into the core of awareness that burst into being after his brush with dark magic, and turns it towards the air. Almost immediately, he's conscious of the drafts of heat rising out of the earth, pressing themselves up against the shape of Zym's wings. He's aware of the thick air hovering near the ground, and the quick-dry streams of wind tumbling high above their heads, light and fast and biting in their speed. At the outer boundary of his perception, he can feel the air sliding in and out of his own lungs, out of Zym's lungs, out of Rayla's, and he can feel - at the very edges of his fingertips, at the liminal spaces between his own mind and the vast unending presence of the world - he can feel his own ability to make that breath _stop_.

The taste of rot is unforgettable and he shies away from the sudden, unsettling impulse to press down and steal their air. He backs up into a different dimension of awareness, one that tastes much less like decay and much more like he just bit his tongue.

 _Oh_ , he thinks. _This tastes like Zym’s kisses_ . It’s a heavy copper-bright galvanic taste, like a cloud that’s cold-hot and knife-sharp. Electricity floods his mouth and lungs, the weight of _Fulminis_ bumping gently against the back of his teeth, and a distant part of him realizes that he could just as easily cast a bolt of lightning as he could _Aspiro_. It would be so easy, in fact, to bring his hands up in the right position, gather the rising charge in his chest, and unleash it in a white strike of blinding-

“CALLUM-!”

“AAAAH-”

Rayla is inches away from his face, her face warring between irritation and concern, as if she can’t figure out whether she wants to make him sit down or wallop him. It’s honestly a very familiar expression to see on her face. “I’ve been calling you for the last three minutes,” she says, her voice as conflicted as her face. “You really didn’t hear me?”

“No?” He rasps, and wow how did his voice get so hoarse? Was he screaming? Please no, that would be so embarrassing and no no _NO_ maybe he _was_ screaming and that’s why Rayla looks so worried and pissed off? And _shit Sol Regem_ did the screaming alert Sol? They’re about to die because he’s an embarrassment and a fool and-

“Your...” she starts, and her hands flutter around his face, unsure of where to land. Something is dribbling out of his mouth. Great, now he’s _drooling?_ Mortified, he reaches up clumsily to wipe it off. His hand comes back red.

“Oh.” They both stare at his hand. Rayla seems frozen to the spot. He tries for a grin. “At least it’s not drool?”

She gives him an incredulous look. “What?”

“‘Cause, you know, that would have been embarrassing.”

Rayla’s eyes close and her hands come together over her lips as if in deep prayer, perhaps asking whatever it is that moonshadow elves pray to for the right amount of patience to keep from snapping his neck. It’s the same look mom would get when he and Ezran would do experiments in the palace kitchens.

She breathes in, out (he can feel the air filling and leaving her lungs, an increasingly constant presence in the back of his mind) and presses the cool back of her hand against his cheek. “You’re not still weird after that stupid spell, are you?”

“I-no, I’m fine.” He’s painfully aware of how hot his own face is. “I feel great.”

“You’re burning.”

“This place isn’t exactly cold.”

She studies him hard, eyes darting all over his face, before muttering,“Okay, fair.” She glances up to where Zym is lazily circling, and Callum takes a chance to look back at how much distance they’ve covered. They’re much closer now to base of the mountain where Sol Regem had kept watch, and with the sun’s glare, he can barely make out the border of rocks marking where they had first crossed over into Xadia. “We can keep going that way,” she points to a cluster of caverns directly below Sol Regem’s perch. “It’s the path my team took when we first set out for Katolis, and it has some good spots for rest.”

“Does it have water?”

“Does it - oh.” She reaches into the bag at her hips and draws out a flask of red juice. “ _Slowly_ ” she instructs. “And leave some for me.”

It might be the meanest thing she’s ever said to him, initial death threats and all, because at the first sip he kind of wants to drink another eight full flasks and then pass out in a rainstorm. Cutting himself off at two gulps feels like some sort of cruel punishment aimed at making him cry, except he’s not sure there’s enough water left in him to do so. “Thanks,” he says instead, because his parents raised him with manners.

Rayla takes one long pull from the flask and then ties it back into her bag somewhat reluctantly. “We need to keep moving. We can make good time if we really run, and we’ll need to if we want to avoid Sol Regem. It’s been close to an hour already, and if he’s on his way back we don’t want to be caught way out in the open like this.”

He tries to surreptitiously wipe his hand on his tunic. “Alright. We can break when we get there?”

“Most definitely. We _will_ break.” Her voice brooks no argument.

He looks at her. “Rayla,” he says, “I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“Yeah, well-” she turns her head to face the caverns, shoulders a tense line. “Either way, we’ll be stopping. We both need the rest.”

She hasn’t, he notices, even broken a sweat. “Right,” he says.

She takes off at a slower jog, one blade out to tap against stone every so often, and he struggles to convince his feet to hurry up just a bit more. Zym glides low between him and Rayla, a silver mirage.

In the spaces where the ache used to live now crackles a current of electricity and the sensation of somebody else’s breath.

__

Flinging himself bodily against bare dirt has never before held such appeal, and he suddenly understands why Rayla did it after the boat ride. He pants and leans heavily on the side of the cavern mouth and doesn’t slide down through sheer willpower. His clothes are soaked.

Zym sits on Rayla’s shoulder, the ceiling of the cave too low for him to fly comfortably. Rayla squints into the dim light. “If we walk a little farther, we’ll come across a small spring. The taste isn’t the best, but the water is clean.”

He nods, breathing hard. “How are you not exhausted?” he manages, pushing himself jerkily away from the cavern wall. The coat is coming off, he decides, propriety be damned.

Rayla swings her arms around and shuffles a bit. “The moon might be waxing again,” she finally says. “My invisibility lasts only when I’m in direct light of the moon, but I still get a boost regardless of the moon being visible. The fuller the moon, the stronger I am - kind of like how ocean-based elves gain and lose strength with the tides.”

“So, what, you’re getting super-powered now?”

“Don’t be daft.” She pats Zym and waits while Callum strips his scarf, gloves, and coat off and ties them around the strap of his bag. “I’m simply returning to my best state.”

“Your “best state” is super-powered. Look at you, your face isn’t even red. Watch, look at this-” he squeezes his scarf and it drips to the floor. “You see that? Disgusting. And yet _you_ ran across that whole thing and didn’t sweat at all.”

Rayla hums. “I still wouldn’t say that’s super-powered. That’s just me being a Moonshadow elf. You’re a human, Callum. You work different.”

Ouch. “Ah, well-” With the weight of the coat and scarf off, he can finally feel air against his skin and it’s so _good_ , like a second wind. The red tunic is short-sleeved, and even though it’s drenched it’s still light enough to let his arms and back cool off. “I guess so. I think that walk took it out of me.”

“We get to the spring and we’ll sit down. I promise it gets cooler the farther in we go.”

Sitting sounds amazing. Water AND sitting sounds phenomenal. But- “Rayla,” he starts, staring into the tunnel leading into the mountain.

“Hmm?”

“It’s pitch black in there. We won’t be able to see where we’re going.”

She blinks at him and then looks in the direction he’s facing, before turning back to him with a smile. “Don’t worry,” she says, and there’s a lilt to her voice he’s never heard before. “Like I said, I’m at my best state.”

__

After avoiding assassination, falling off a waterfall, seeing Ezran dive into a frozen lake, almost getting struck by lightning, and navigating a floor made of actual lava, he would have thought that walking around in the dark wouldn't have registered high on his list of Anxiety-Inducing Activities to Avoid. And yet.

There’s something to be said about not being able to see even a bit of sky.

“I’ve got you, you don’t have to look so scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

“I can see you sweating from here.”

“I’m not _scared_ , I’m just-” _suffocating_ “-recovering from the run we did earlier.”

“That was half an hour before we got to the spring, and you were fine when we got to the spring. You were the one who wanted to get up and keep going!”

Yeah, well, when he was at the spring he could still sort of tell where the opening to the caves were. Now, with stone pressing in on him on all sides and nothing but stale, dead air to choke on, it kind of feels like he walked into his own coffin. On an oft-ignored, intellectual level, he knows that he just has to turn around and walk and eventually he’ll find the sky again, but the intellectual level has taken a backseat to make room for the primitive, paranoid level, which kicked into full throttle the second he realized he could no longer feel fresh air.  

Draped along his back, Zym seems to agree, curling his head tight to next to Callum’s own and providing a steady background of disgruntled noises. Every few minutes he’ll lick his chops nervously and out of the corners of his eyes Callum will catch a glimpse of the lightning arcs constantly sparking at the back of Zym’s throat, a brief flash of light in an otherwise pitch canvas. Zym’s claws curl around his shoulders and bite through the thin fabric of his tunic, and Callum allows it, Zym’s weight and Rayla’s solid grasp on his wrist the only contact points keeping him anchored in the endless sensory void.

There's nothing but darkness and the sound of their feet hitting the cave floor, and he finds himself wishing Ezran and Bait were here despite himself. Ezran had never been bothered by small spaces, and Bait could have provided some actual light, mood pending. The thought of his baby brother makes his heart squeeze tight - is he hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Corvus _seems_ dedicated, but does he know that Ezran gets spooked by loud thunder? Or that Ezran sometimes gets nightmares and needs someone closeby for the first three hours? Or that Ezran cries if a bug gets smooshed? Does he know about the snail armor?

“Are you about to cry?”

“N-no!” He wipes at his face, which is blessedly dry. Zym gives his ear a despondent lick and he can feel his hair standing from the static electricity. “I’m just-” he searches for the right words to describe just how much he misses his little brother, struggles, fails.“-Worried about Ezran,” he finishes quietly.

Rayla doesn’t stop marching them forward, but her grip on his wrist changes just enough for her thumb to brush the back of his hand, as if in reassurance. She’s quiet for a long second, and then, “Corvus nearly had my horns.”

What? “What?”

“The first night after leaving your crazy aunt, that Corvus guy appeared and nearly got the drop on me. He was fast, strong, experienced- it was kind of like going against my teachers, way back when I was first learning how to use my swords. He kept me constantly on the defensive. But-” Again, her thumb brushes the back of his hand. She pauses long enough to turn him a bit so he doesn’t smack into a wall, before gently tugging him forward once more. “He never let me forget why he was there.”

“To what, kill you?” This whole speech has done nothing to endear him to Corvus.

“To keep you two safe.”

Oh.

They’re silent for a few more minutes, nothing but the sound of their footsteps and Zym’s occasional whine to keep them company in the dark. Finally, “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Rayla leads him past a curve only she can see, guiding his hands so he can touch the wall for himself. “I can’t promise you he’ll keep Ezran and Bait completely safe, but I do know he’s a tough fighter, and he cares about Ezran.”

“Yeah.” The memory of Ezran’s head held high, like a prince, like a _king_ , is burned into his brain. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Damn straight I’m right. It’s been established by now that I’m the go-to authority for all common-sense needs and questions. For all your worries and stupid-idea consultations, visit with me and I’ll set you right.”

“Your generosity is-”

“Legendary! I know, I know, and my-”

“-ego, pride-”

“ _Patience_ \- you are such a snot - is renown through all of Xadia. Even Lightning herself takes notes.”

Callum snorts “What patience? When have you _ever_ -” Wait. “‘Lightning herself’?”

“Mhm.” Rayla tugs him past what feels like a strange rocky outgrowth, and the air around him changes, tastes greener, sharper, quicker. They must be nearing an opening.

“Lightning … what comes out of the sky?”

He can’t see anything, but he can _feel_ Rayla staring at him. “No, Callum, you- you cannot be serious.”

“Serious about wha-”

There’s a patently unfair amount of incredulity in Rayla’s voice when she says, “Lightning the _queen?_ ”

“How am I supposed to know what your dumb queen’s name is?”

“She’s the _queen!_ ”

“So? You know how many queens and kings are running around in the human kingdoms?”

Once again, despite not being able to see her, he gets the distinct impression that Rayla is shaking her head in despair. “There’s only one queen that truly matters in all of Xadia, and it’s Queen Lightning. She’s guardian of the skies and borders, protector of the heavens, and sole bearer of the Royal Burden. Or at least, we all thought she was. Zym kind of changes things.”

“How so?”

“Callum.” The unspoken _‘idiot’_ leaves an unmistakable shape. “He’s her son.”

There’s a space of silence where his brain chews that over, and then, “Oh my god your queen is a _dragon?_ ”

“Callum how dumb are you-”

“Like I knew everybody called that Thunder guy “king” but I didn’t know they were _serious._ ”

“Of _course_ they’re serious, he was ruler supreme of the magic Heavenstreams and the oldest dragon in all the lands! In fact, I had a teacher once that swore Thunder had been there when the first elves were borne of magic.”

“But-” he struggles to wrap his mind around it. “Why not an elf for a ruler? Can dragons talk? Do dragons even think the way you and I do?”

“Dragons don’t have to think the way we do, that’s not their job - their purpose is to champion and protect the primal sources. Thunder spent all those thousands of years of his life guarding the sky magics and weaving power into the wind itself - his magical core would feed into the celestial air systems, and he in turn would lend his power in magic-poor stretches of sky by calling down storms and tempests. He was in constant communication with the sky. I can’t believe you don’t _know_ this.”

Callum can’t muster up a defense. He had known, on some level, that Thunder had been the biggest dragon in Xadia, that he’d been incredibly formidable, and that he’d been revered - but he’d had no idea that Thunder had been the actual _king_ of the lands. He’d thought the moniker had come from the fact that Thunder was big and old and powerful, like how large goldeers were sometimes called “forest kings” by the locals, or how flamescales were dubbed “pond guardians” by fishermen unlucky enough to encounter them. The idea that a creature - what was basically an _animal_ with a magical core - had been considered legitimate royalty boggles his mind.

“How can…” he starts, stops. He knows he’s about to say something prodigiously rude. In his head, the memory of his mother gives him the imperial warning-look. He ignores her. “How can a creature be king if he can’t even talk? How does he give orders, make laws, hold court? How can entire land have…” he waves around a hand he can’t see, “a _creature_ be _king?_ ”

To his surprise and relief, Rayla doesn’t sound angry when she responds. “It’s - I should have known you wouldn’t’ve understood, I keep forgetting you don’t have a - but, anyways, it’s not a matter of holding court or making laws or whatever. That’s _human_ kings. Human concepts. In a land like Xadia, where magic is everywhere and in everything, a King and Queen isn’t determined by bloodline - it’s determined by magic itself.

“But why a _dragon_ \- why choose a, a creature that couldn’t be farther from an elf to rule over elves than say, you know, an _actual_ elf to rule over elves?”

“You’re not getting it. _We. Are. Creatures_ . I’m a _magical creature_ . And the _magic_ \- not us elves, not some pointless bloodline, but the magic itself - chooses a ruler that’s worthy of presiding over the rest of the magical kingdom. Anything with a connection to a primal source can feel it - I can tell that Zym is my prince, because my very being, my base parts, recognize him as the son of my king. Just as any other magical being in Xadia can recognize Lightning as the queen - her core resonates with our own, and we acknowledge her as a true ruler. It’s deeper than anything like blood - it’s magic itself. You would know if, well-” she fumbles, trips over her syllables, pauses. “You’re not like us. You’re, uh, you,” she finishes lamely. “I mean, it’s probably why humans do dark magic. You don’t understand how awful it is, how it feels to be near it.”

Callum’s blood runs cold. “What are you saying,” he says, and it’s not a question.

“Dark magic is heinous, it’s unforgivable, it’s - it’s just _wrong_. Being near it is suffocating - it’s every sick, dirty feeling you’ve ever had, concentrated into one spell. It’s the worst - anybody with a magical core would know this. But you - you’re human. So you don’t know that, I guess.”

“But I _do_ know that!” He thinks of how the spell had cracked its way into his mind, out of his mouth, filled his lungs. “I know it feels bad! That’s why I was so against it when Claudia tried teaching me!”

“You know it in your _head_ that it’s bad, but you can’t sense its evil the way we do.”

“Rayla, it literally made me sick.”

“Yeah, but-” She’s so clearly struggling to put together the right words to convince him, but he shakes his head and says, “I’d seen Claudia do it and I knew I didn’t like it-”

“That’s not the same as-”

“- _I sensed it was bad-_ ”

“Then why did you do it?!” Rayla’s voice is hard, sharp, angry. “Why did you do something so obviously sick and, and wrong? If you had truly felt how bad-”

“-I _DID-!”_

 _“_ -Then you wouldn’t have done it, but you DID! Because you’re a stupid! Human!”

Her hold on his wrist stays gentle. His anger is electric.

In and out, the air in her lungs, in Zym’s and in his own. The air is damper now, heavy with moisture and charged with his frustration. Distantly, in the kernel of awareness that’s now permanently attuned to the sky, he senses a breeze.

He yanks his wrist out of her hands and she lets him.

“Callum-”

“You’re right.” He breathes in, holds, exhales. “I’m just a, a human, but it really did feel bad. It felt like I’d never breathe again, or like-like I was going to be trapped forever. It was really, it was- it was scary, but…” He thinks of Rayla, surrounded by humans ( _by Soren and Claudia, and boy that still hurts_ ) with only twin blades to defend a chained, wounded dragon and herself, and swallows. “You were in a bad spot and I…”

She reaches out to take his hand, and he doesn't shy away. She leads him towards clearer, fresher air. “Would you do it again?”

The very thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and the water he all but chugged thirty minutes ago threatens to make a comeback. He forces it back down, thinking again of his mom, his dad, of Ezran. “Of course,” he says.

Rayla's is silent as they finally, _finally_ , reach the lip of the cave. Light and fresh air filter in through the opening, a narrow tunnel that climbs slightly upwards to meet a bright blue sky that’s almost painful after the total darkness of the cave. Near the edges of the cave’s mouth, he can see spots of lush green growing in the cracks of crumbling rock. “That’s what sets us apart, I guess,” she eventually says, before loping up the incline and extending down her left hand for Callum to take. He grabs onto it and she helps him climb the last upslope. “I don’t think I could ever bring myself to use it.” She admits, and then squints as the sun promptly blinds her. “Ugh. Light.”

Around his neck, Zym is _ecstatic_ , squirming around and batting his wings against Callum’s head and generally making the opposite of whatever pathetic mewling he’d been maintaining for the duration of their intra-mountain trek, and honestly, Callum can’t blame him. The fresh air feels amazing. With one deep breath, he can taste the wet scent of damp soil and recent rainfall, the ribbons of cool breeze cutting through the heavy, waterlogged atmosphere, and the memory of ozone from recent lightning. There must have just been a storm.

Zym’s tail smacks against the side of his face as the dragon scrabbles off his shoulders to launch himself at the cave opening, faster than Callum can catch him.

“ _Wait_ \- I have to check that it’s clear first before-” Rayla grabs at him and misses - Zym is surprisingly fast, tiny legs considered - and they both watch as Zym flaps his wings once, twice, and zigzags a sloppy exit from the cave.

“We should maybe-”

“Yeah we definitely-”

They run after him.

Zym makes it a grand total of five feet before Rayla descends on him like the assassin she is and traps his little legs down. “I know you’re excited - _stop squirming_ \- I have to check to make sure it’s - _Callum hold him-_ ”

Grinning because he’s just as excited (those caves can stay behind forever, the sky is gorgeous) he reaches over to help hold down Zym’s limbs -

\- glances up -

\- grabs Rayla by a white-knuckled hand and drags her and Zym back to the mouth of the thrice-damned cave. Whatever she was going to say dies on her lips the moment she catches his expression, and she follows his pinprick gaze only to grow still beside him.

High above them flies Sol Regem, wings slicing through the air slowly and precisely. The archdragon beats his wings once and the light filtering down seems as if to intensify, each individual sunbeam burning brighter than before.

“Do you think he knows we’re here?” Callum whispers. Rayla shakes her head no, eyes locked on Sol’s circling form. “No, I think - I think he’s waiting for something.”

They huddle together, Callum’s heart in his mouth, grip tight on a fidgeting Zym. Sol Regem circles for what must only be two minutes, but feels like hours, and then beside him Rayla starts. “Look,” she says, and points to what looks like a rapidly-moving flint of light, but resolves into a strange, mirror-winged flock of birds on closer inspection. “Stormwings,” she says by way of explanation. “They like to stay near recent weather events and feed off the residual energy. They act as royal messengers for the Queen.”

The stormwing birds dip and dive around Sol Regem’s massive wings, incorporating him into their flock and weaving around his body. One bird in particular, larger than the rest, breaks off and flies parallel to Sol’s eye. As they watch, Sol takes one giant wingbeat upwards, glides serenely for one more beat, and then - to the absolute panic of everybody watching- lets out an enormous, ear-splitting roar.

It’s so unexpected that Callum can’t quite figure out if the pain in his chest comes from shock alone or is a side-effect of the roar’s rib-shaking volume. Rayla presses herself closer to almost form a shield, arms wrapped around his own ready to yank him further into the cave if need be. In his own arms, Zym thrashes violently.

“ _Zym, stop, be quiet-_ ” he hisses, wincing through the stabs in his chest. Zym twists around, wings flapping erratically, and then Callum feels Zym take in a quick breath, almost as if to-

Callum’s hand shoots forward to close Zym’s snout before he can roar back and kill them all, but he’s not fast enough to avoid the blue flash of electricity that snakes out of the corners Zym’s mouth. Rayla has the foresight to slap a hand over Callum’s mouth to muffle his _own_ scream as burning bright-hot lightning makes contact, freezes his hand, arm, body, arrests him completely - breathing and all - racing up every single nerve and setting every inch of him on fire with something skating close to but not quite agony.

It’s over almost as soon as it started, Zym realizing a half-second too late what he’s doing. A distant, numb part of Callum’s mind notes the tremors running up his own and Rayla’s arms. He can’t summon the strength or presence of mind to ask if she’s okay, and she seems to be similarly paralyzed, her breaths jerky and forced. He can’t close his eyes - that’s a level of bodily control still beyond him at the moment - but he can still dip down into the well of awareness in his chest -

which-

 _blazes blue/white/bright/hot/cold_ -

(-fulminis rises up and surges against his self-control-)

He pushes past it - whatever it is, sweet and sharp and beckoning and too wild to look at directly - and reaches instead towards the now-constant presence of Rayla and Zym and his own breathing. Steady, in and out, into and out of the blood and back into lungs and through lips to return to air, a continuous cycle. It settles him and gradually overtakes the numbness that settled in his face and fingers. Rayla shifts, shudders, gasps in one big breath before shaking sense back into her limbs, and then drags his still-clumsy body a little deeper into the cave. Zym presses his snout apologetically into Callum’s shoulder, and Callum presses his own chin to the top of Zym’s head in uncoordinated instinct. “M’s’okay,” he slurs quietly, and Rayla taps a hand against his lips to remind him to shut the hell up. Smart.

It quickly turns into a moot point, to their immense relief. After the roar, Sol Regem circles once, twice, and then turns back, presumably to his original perch somewhere far behind them, leaving verdant green land to return to his vigil over the Xadian border’s deserts. The stormwings loop back around each other, their formation flowing and morphing into a V until the large bird that originally broke off rejoins and takes point. They fly off further into the greener lands, opposite Sol, until the only thing left visible is the occasional glint of sun reflecting off their silver wings. When even that is no longer discernible, Rayla relaxes, letting out a slow breath while bringing her head down to rest on Callum’s shoulder. Callum is still somewhat frozen.

“What the hell.” She mumbles. It’s an incredibly fine point.

Zym nudges his hand and gives it a small lick - and a zap - and Callum creakily looks down at the damage.

Raised, silvery scars adorn his hands, spidering away from his palm like the roots of a young tree. They creep up his arms and - when he traces them up his sleeve - whorl around his shoulders in a twist of bumpy flesh, as if the electric charge had gotten funneled up the length of his arms only to dam up upon reaching his spine. They seem to glimmer blue where Zym is closest, reflective and near-white and nowhere as painful as he'd initially feared they'd be. In fact, in place of the burning sting he'd anticipated, a buzzing sensation seems to run through the scars instead, an echo of the paralyzing energy of the original blast.

Rayla's hands, in contrast, are an angry, weeping red. “Fucking shit,” she says, with the kind of inconvenienced tone more suited for a milk spill. “I literally just got the left one taken care.” She starts to flex one of her hands and stops, hissing. “This is going to slow us down.”

“Do you have bandages? We can wrap them with herbs for protection.”

“Yeah, but we should leave those for you, you heal slower than-” she looks up, sees his hands, stops. “Your hands.”

“My hands.”

She doesn’t exactly grab his arms, what with hers being covered in red-raw burns, but she does a close approximation. Violet eyes sweep his skin, taking in the lichtenberg scars. “Are you in pain?” she finally asks.

He considers it. “No?”

“I’m not even going to ask,” she mutters, voice flat. Callum peers at her face, and for the first time notices how tired she looks. This - from initial assassination attempt to bonding to boats to Xadia- has been an exhausting journey for her.

“Stop staring and make yourself useful. There’s a roll of clean bandages I got from Lujanne in my left back-pouch. Take it out and help me with my hands.” Despite her words, her tone is soft, and when Callum does just that and begins wrapping gauze and wound-heal paste onto broken skin, she closes her eyes and bows her head, as if it all at once became too much to hold up.

“We could have died.” she says when he cuts off the last bandage and stores the rest back in her pouch. “From Sol, from Zym.”

“But we didn’t,” he reminds her.

“We didn’t,” she agrees, and he can’t exactly pinpoint the emotion in her voice right now, but it brings to heart the same degree of warmth that Ezran would sometimes elicit when they were younger and their mom was freshly gone. Like something he shouldn’t let go, like something painfully dear.

“Take Zym and let’s go,” she says. “There’s a good spot I know where we can set up camp and eat. We’ll need the rest - it’s a long trip to the Queen.”

She turns, bandages stark against her skin, stride determined despite the weariness pulling at her frame, and with a strangely full heart, Callum follows.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im at jideni3 over at tumblr, and yeah idk where this is going. like for real. i cannot emphasize this enough. this bastard just dont know


	3. Chapter 3

They walk until the sun starts to set. The dry scorch of the desert immediately gives way to incredibly dense, boiling humid forest after they exit the mountain tunnel, which - when prompted by Callum, who majorly hopes it’s the _only_ cave system they have to traverse - is apparently the only way to cross from the sun deserts to the mist mountains without taking a two weeks climbing detour, according to Rayla. “It has all sorts of runes and spells carved into the stone from past travelers to keep it safe and make the journey faster,” she explains, between mouthfuls of juice and dried fruit. “If we'd taken any other route, we’d still be dodging Sol.”

They end up following what looks like a once well-travelled path, now faded and overrun by the twisting raised roots of moss-covered trees and wild flower vines that glow when approached. Rayla will occasionally point out different magical plants and explain their properties to Callum, who on his end tries his best to commit them to memory. Xadia, he finds, apparently has way more poisonous plants when compared to the human kingdoms - not that he’d ever paid much attention to plants in the past. That was more of an Ezran and Harrow thing.

The reminder of his missing family inevitably makes him clench and bite his nails, and he doubles down on memorizing every shape and fact about the plants he can, if only to record them in his sketchbook and pass them onto to Ezran later.

The sky is soft pinks and lavenders when Rayla finally points out a copse of trees arranged in a rough semicircle. “We’ll break here,” she says, dropping her cloak and pack to the ground before fishing out a small netcloth and waterskin. “I’ll be back with water and food  - there's a small stream about fifteen minutes from here, and last time I passed through there were some good forage spots. Can you set up a fire?”

“Won't that give us away?” He starts digging through his own satchel for flint anyway, one eye on Zym, who has busied himself with wreaking terror on Rayla's cloak.

“Normally, yes, but most people don't pass through here if they can help it. Too many…” she waves a bandaged hand around, literally grasping for words. “Bad...vibes.”

“Uh...okay?”

“I can't explain it. It's a dark magic thing. King Thunder fell and, like, echoes? Of the dark spells that took him still linger. Like, the spells themselves only lasted for a day, but the after-effects are still noticeable. It was worse in the sun deserts, but even this far out it still feels wrong. Like your head's being squeezed, y'know?”

“Oh.” He hadn't noticed anything beyond how tired he was and how much his legs hurt. “I honestly didn't really feel much.”

“I think it has to do with having a magical core. I'm surprised Zym is doing so well - I'd have thought the lingering spells would've targeted him simply because of what he is.”

Zym happily rips a hole through her cloak, a truly terrifying sound considering who the cloak belongs to. She smiles at him and Callum wonders if he's allowed to be jealous of an infant dragon. “Anyways,” she starts, and even her _tone_ is fond. The true power of the dragon prince. “You should be safe to make a fire - there's little to no chance anybody will see it, and there's no point in being cold if we can help it.”

She disappears into the trees at about the same time the sun disappears beneath the mountain-line, and Callum hastens to gather stones and firewood before visibility drops too much. Zym continues his quest to desecrate Rayla's cloak, before finally getting bored and opting instead to tag alongside Callum, weaving himself through Callum's heels with the same cheerful obliviousness dogs exhibit seconds before causing a disaster. He seems to find Callum tripping over and swearing very exciting, if the facelicking is any indication. One faceplant, three un-princely swearwords, and a stubbed toe later, Callum has a respectable little fire going in the heart of the copse of trees. Zym gnaws on one of the twigs too green for the fire.

Rayla returns with unbandaged arms, drenched hair, a topped off waterskin, and a netcloth filled with a variety of completely unrecognizable berries and mushrooms, which Callum shoves into his mouth anyways, fully committed to whatever happens to him. For her part, Rayla grabs the netcloth back after he makes a face at a particularly bitter fruit - “They’re not _all_ for eating, genius-” and offers Zym some of the bluer berries while he spirits away the waterskin. “Thanks,” he finally says, after emptying the skin of half its contents. She snatches it out of his hands - burns still vivid on her skin - and offers some to Zym, who gives it a curious sniff before returning to the berries. Shrugging, Rayla ties it shut before finally letting herself slump backwards next to the campfire. There’s a comfortable silence, accompanied by the sounds of crackling firewood and Zym noisily working his way through his meal, and the sky finishes darkening overhead, stars and moonlight filtering down through the weave of branches.

After hunting through his satchel for a piece of unbroken graphite, Callum scoots closer to the fire and takes out his sketchbook, flipping past the pictures of Claudia, his mother, Bait, and - more recently - Ezran, Rayla, and Harrow, to a blank page not quite close to the middle. He writes the words ‘Xadian Plants and Properties’ near the top and underlines it, before sketching out the berries Rayla had brought, medicinal herbs she had pointed out during their walk, and flowers she’d warned him away from due to their characteristics. Below each sketch, he scribbles notes on edibility, uses, side-effects, and where to find them, and tries very, very hard not to think about how Ezran would’ve just loved to be here right now.

His hands follow his thoughts, and before he realizes it, he’s staring at a soft-shaded pencil outline of his little brother, looking away towards a kingdom he hasn’t drawn yet, face as solemn as it was when Ezran hugged Zym goodbye. Callum stares at it, unblinking. He wonders if Corvus is enough to keep Ezran safe. He wonders if he can stand to bury another family member and survive it. He stares at the picture of his baby brother.

“Let me see.”

Rayla’s hands are gentle as she thumbs through the sketchbook. Callum has to close his eyes and run his hands over Zym as nonchalantly as he can, because she talked to him about this already, he needs to get over this. Corvus is enough, and Ezran is fine.

“Oh, you’ve got me in here, I look very cool-” she dodges his panicked swipe, grin on her face, before scooting around the fire and flipping the pages faster. “And Ezran - you got his face down perfect, very nice - and that Claudia, maybe less of her, yeah? Just less dark magic users, good for our collective health, we don’t need that - is this a dragon burning a, a - what-?”

“Marshmallow man, give it back.”

“A- _no_ -a marshmallow man? What’s a marshmallow?”

“Rayla.” He tries to steal it back, but her arms are simply longer than his, and he’s not trying too hard, mindful of the feverish burns marring her limbs. “That is - that is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard get said.”

“Dramatic human.” She somehow manages to turn the pages with only one hand making contact with the book, which should make no sense, she has just four fingers. The next page she lands on is also of Rayla, as is the one after that, and he would be more embarrassed about it if Rayla didn’t seem quite so impressed. “I’m definitely more serious than this, I never smile this much - but _this_ pose is nice, good form, very good form, Runaan would be proud - and is this- this is your mum, right?”

She’s found newer sketches of Sarai since last time, ones with his mom wearing her royal wedding gown, his mom gardening and threading flowers through Ezran’s hair, his mom wearing her battle armor from all those years ago, before Harrow, when she’d go off on patrols with the Standing Guard and leave him with-

“Your mom was a soldier?”

“A lieutenant, for Aunt Amaya.” He remembers how his mom would always stand slightly behind Aunt Amaya the way Gren does now, how they’d catch each other’s eye and sign one-handed so fast that hearing civilians wouldn’t even realizing they were talking. He finds himself smiling. “She was really cool. She’d have to leave a lot, but then she’d come back with all sorts of stories and souvenirs and things. Sometimes, if her team went into Xadia itself - don’t look at me like that, this was before the whole thing with Thunder, not so tense, you know? But sometimes she’d bring back little plants or bugs or things that would glow or sparkle. It was a really good time. I mean, I missed her, obviously, but she always came back.”

Rayla is quiet for a moment, studying the sketch of his mother in full armor. Her face is unreadable, and as he stares - not that he _means_ to, obviously, he’s not - it’s not _staring_ , he’s being very normal and not awkward at all - he notices that her eyes seem to glimmer and reflect the moonbeams piercing the tree canopy. “Who would you stay with? The king?”

“Huh?”

“When your mom went out.”

“OH - no, King dad, the uh, the king, dad - no, I didn’t stay with him.”

_Wow_.

She looks at him with what looks like surprise on her face, though whether it’s from his response or the delivery, he can’t tell. “Do humans just leave their children unaccompanied when they have duties to attend?” she asks, and she sounds like she’s making an effort to sound confused instead of scandalized.

“I mean, no, of course not,” he responds. His tone must be sufficiently affronted because she immediately bobs her head in agreement, like she hadn’t thought otherwise for a single second. He’d call her out on it, except he distinctly remembers accusing her of drinking blood, so he really can’t say much. “I stayed with my dad.”

“But you just said-”

“My _first_ dad, before he-” he pauses, frowns, shakes his head clear. “He … he’s gone. Died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don't really remember him all that much.”

Rayla nods, sympathetic. Pauses. Frowns. “That…” she trails off. Looks away, looks back, shrugs a shoulder. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense.” she says slowly. “Not that-I mean, not that I don’t believe you, but- I don’t know, it just seems kind of weird.”

“What, that my first dad died?”

“That you can’t remember him.”

He looks at her. “I mean,” he starts, “I was like, very young when he died.”

“But you were old enough to remember your mother’s stories and souvenirs.”

He opens his mouth. Stops. He almost says, “They were memorable stories,” except that would imply his dad was somehow less memorable, and _that_ is a level of unfortunate phrasing he’s not at all emotionally ready to deal with at midnight in the boonies of a magical land that collectively exiled his people. “Yeah, I don’t know,” he says instead, sidestepping that whole mess. “I know I spent time with him, and he watched me when mom was out, but I honestly don’t remember his face or what he sounded like. I don’t even remember how he died.”

“Was-so-” Rayla stutters, halts, bites her lip and looks away. “Never mind, it was a stupid que-”

“He was a good dad,” Callum interrupts, seeing where she was going and disliking it immensely. “Like, really good. I know I liked him a lot, and even though I don’t remember what he looked like, I remember feeling, you know, safe and happy. I just don’t know what my brain did with his face.”

Rayla nods, flipping through the sketches of his mother serious, smiling, laughing, occasionally accompanied by her children or Amaya or King Harrow, but never anybody else. “Sounds almost like a damnatio,” she says.

“Language.”

She clicks her tongue at him like she’s annoyed, but there’s an amused smile on her face when he looks over. “It’s not a swear word, _although_ \- oh, funny - I guess you could call it a _curse_ word.” She waggles her eyebrows like she just said something clever, and Callum stares. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he admits, and she deflates, joke defeated.

“A damnatio,” she says, slightly put out, “is a spell that erases people’s memories and perception of someone or something. It’s usually used in combination with an official Scouring, but if it’s effective enough it can be used in isolation.”

“Right.” He reaches over one last time for the sketchbook, and she hands it over easily. “I understood about half of everything you just said.”

“It’s - er, hmm, how to explain- it’s like,” Rayla tips onto her back again, face to the moon. The torched flesh of her arms appear almost to glow in the light, but the weak flicker of the campfire makes it too hard for Callum to observe closely. She hums in thought. “Imagine, imagine that somebody does something really bad. Like, setting fire to the royal library, or, or, or trying to usurp the bearers of the Royal Burden - honestly anything that insults the Queen and King. Depending on the crime, the event or person would be brought before whatever power in charge of them is and spelled to go away.”

“So, killed?”

“More than that. Any memory of the criminal, crime, or tragedy would disappear from everybody’s mind - people that knew them would forget, any mention of them in books or letters would become impossible to read or remember, and anybody that tried talking about them would immediately forget what they were talking about. Completely erased - if it was a person, it’d be like they never existed. If it was an event, like it never happened.”

“And-” Callum’s hands grip the sketchbook, where he keeps the memories of everybody he holds dear, everything new and everywhere important, copied perfectly from a mind that has always had uncannily perfect recollection. “And people - people are okay with that?”

“Why wouldn’t they be? Nobody wants to remember a criminal or a tragedy if they can help it.”

“What about the criminal’s family? What if the tragedy is worth remembering?”

“Well, okay,” Rayla’s face is slightly chagrined now. “The spell doesn’t always work perfectly. People that are close enough to the event or the person would remember - like, if my parents ever presented themselves, they’d be exiled and subjected to damnatio for sure, but _I_ might still remember them simply because, well, I spent my entire childhood with them. For a big part of my life, I had a big connection to them. For all that was worth.” The last part is spat.

He doesn’t know how to deal with her ire, doesn’t really understand it, so he keeps his mouth shut and stares at his sketchbook, wondering what he’d do if one day he opened it and found himself unable to recognize his own family’s face. All his memories, taken because some monarch had decided tampering with minds was worth alleviating an insult. It scares him.

“How many people have been forgotten?” He asks her.

She looks at him. “Callum, I don’t know. That’s the whole point - they were forgotten. I wouldn’t know because, if they were magically stricken from memory, I wouldn’t even remember they’d ever existed.”

_Really_ scares him.

“You don’t have to worry though,” she says. She’s staring straight at the moon now, and her eyes are definitely shining, her arms definitely glowing - she’d told him, _told_ him she was a magical creature. “It’s never been used on humans. I don’t even know if it works on you people - I think being connected to a primal source is necessary for the spell to take effect.”

It’s a small comfort, even if the actual overall concept creeps him out to no end. “You’re just okay with that?” he asks. “With having the king and queen decide what you can and can’t remember?”

Rayla shrugs, eyes half-lidded. “They carry the Royal Burden,” she says simply. “We might have our own ideas about what to do about a situation, but at the end of the day, if they decide something - erasing our memories or what have you - then, you know, we abide by it. Because they’re our rulers. You should know this - you literally lived with your king.”

He had, but dad had never explicitly used his crown to coerce Callum into doing anything. He’d even hesitated to use his position as a parent to justify orders, which for a long time Callum had interpreted as reluctance on King Harrow’s part to acknowledge him as anything other than a spare body. The memory of dad’s letter sends a pang through his heart, but it’s a good pain. Callum squeezes his eyes shut before he thinks too hard about it and does something embarrassing, like have feelings in public. “I guess,” he says, because it’s easy.

Rayla’s eyes slide all the way shut, and the breath in her lungs and at the back of his mind even out as she starts falling asleep. Callum’s pretty sure it’s unintentional - Rayla always insisted on taking first and last watch during their trek to Xadia, weirdly opposed to letting Ezran or Callum lose too much sleep, _weak, subcentury-lifespan humans_ \- but the exhaustion he’d observed in the last twenty-four hours seems to have finally taken its toll. Bemused, he watches as Rayla slips into a dead sleep.

Zym is a buzzing-warm weight at his side, pressing his entire body against Callum’s thigh and resting his little dragon head on Callum’s lap. It’s adorable, and also makes for a very, very effective trap, arresting his movement lest he disturb the dragon. If he concentrates, he can hear the faint noise of Zym snoring over the crackle of firewood.

He closes the sketchbook quietly, and prepares himself for first watch. He glances at Rayla, and a moment passes silent, calm. He opens his sketchbook.

The night passes peacefully.

__

Rayla doesn’t wake up even once during the night, which is a testament to how overworked and burned out she must have been. Callum counts himself dubiously lucky she stayed asleep, if only because he himself knocked out about halfway through the night, and he’s pretty sure she would have strangled him if she’d woken up to find nobody on watch duty.

Zym is a little lump of limbs and scales, and Callum tried to squash down the feeling of immense guilt he gets when he has to jostle and push the dragon off his lap, but he _really needs to go_ and Zym seems very determined to stay right where he is. When he finally manages to free himself, Zym simply snorts, licks Callum’s hand once, and tucks his head back under his wing. The the resemblance to Ezran is _astounding_.

Callum files it away for later in favor of heading in the direction Rayla had said the stream was, figuring he might as well take advantage of the early hour to see if he can wash off some of the dust, dirt, and grime from his skin and clothes. Twenty ambling minutes with a much needed break later, he finds himself in front of the clearest, quaintest, most non-threatening stream he’s ever laid eyes on. _Rayla approved_ , he thinks as he chucks his boots off next to some equally picturesque bush and strips multiple layers of disgusting, sweat-stiff clothes off into the stream.

The water is cool, but the air is so dreadfully hot and sticky that he doesn’t mind, and he focuses first on scrubbing his pants, socks, undershirt, scarf, and overcoat between the smooth stones lining the bottom of the waters, taking care not to rip the stitching. After finding a sufficiently low-hanging branch to let them drip-dry, he takes the small lump of soap wrapped in oilcloth and twine - greatly reduced from the bar he’d initially taken from the Banther lodge, especially after splitting it with Ezran - and rubs at his skin until he feels more like a decent person and less like a walking mound of garbage. He mixes the suds with sand and scrubs his legs and arms, lathers his hair into a frothy mess of white, and finally just sinks until he’s submerged up to his nose. He hasn’t been this clean since he and Ezran stole away into Lujanne’s stone bath and wasted half a bottle of liquid that smelled nice and foamed like nobody’s business.

Like the previous night with the sketchbook, or right before that in the cave, his mind drifts to Ezran. Is he awake yet? He used to wake up so horribly early when he was five, but now that he’s older he’s been staying up later and later and sleeping in more and more often-but does Corvus know that? Would Corvus care? Has Ezran had a chance to take a bath? Will he return to his kingdom covered in the muck of a two-week journey? Will he - and the thought sends wave of cold sweeping through Callum’s lungs in a way that has nothing to do with the brisk water - will he be accepted by his people as rightful ruling king? Will others, people power-hungry and desperate, paint targets on his back and try to kill him? Will the guard, kind though they seemed, protect Ezran to the fullest of their abilities, or will they be complicit in the disposal of a child sovereign?

Will _Viren_ -

The sudden memory has Callum ducking his head under the water’s surface, as if by hiding underwater he’ll somehow dodge any and all reminders of the man who literally stole his voice and denied him audience with his own dad, and who’d - unblinkingly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world - said that King Harrow had _known_ about the egg, maybe even condoned it. The thought pisses him off to no end. King Harrow had been a stern, no-nonsense leader when he'd had to be, and his history as a commander would shine in the brisk tone he'd sometimes adopt when issuing orders to his soldiers, but he'd also had a moral compass the approximate shape and size of the hole mom had left when she'd gone off to battle to never return. Taking Thunder down, that's something Callum can understand - that's politics, history, grief - but an _egg?_

_Impudent little mongrel._

Callum closes his eyes and sinks deeper into the water.

Submerged, the vacuum of normal sounds, the seeming absence of gravity, the way his body feels like it's being pulled and swayed by the current - no longer heavy, no longer bound by the earth, supported effortlessly on all sides - combine to create a feeling of weightlessness, like he's a leaf being pulled along by a wind gust, or the suspended, frozen breath of a snowy morning. It's so close to freedom, skates towards a sensation akin to what he imagines birds feel when they glide down on summer thermals. He could stay like this forever, lost in this quiet glide of water. The only thing missing is air.

He breaks the surface of the water and takes in a huge breath. He'd held off long enough from breathing that the air tastes sweet now, a relief against the sharp ache in his chest that had appeared in the last thirty seconds he'd spent under. _Stupid_ , he thinks to himself as he pants and stands and tried to get his breath under control. _He's nowhere near you. You didn't have to do that._

Still, he feels a bit better. There was a balm to the weightlessness and illusion of freedom - it had soothed something in him, whatever it was that had freaked out at the memory of Viren's glowing purple eyes, hands clawed around the glowing gold of Callum's voice. Like nothing could touch him. Like he was safe.

Callum doesn't slip under again - the jitters are almost all gone, and he's not a fan of holding his breath that long, breathing is _fantastic_ thank you very much - but he does close his eyes, focusing on the air cycling through his lungs. A still-nervous part of him is curious to see if he can still pinpoint Rayla and Zym's breathing from all the way over here, so accustomed he's become to sensing the presence of their breath over the last day and a half. He casts about for it - stepping back into his own head to that place he found after waking up from that godawful weird dream - and just as he starts following the path of a playful breeze threading high through a maze of branches, he gets -

_-yanked sideways_

[-his breath catches, chest paralyzes-]

_-into a rolling mass of glass-sharp green and twisting rime, hands borne of stupidity and desperation reaching down to throttle his throat and drag at his lungs, squeeze down on his chest, stab down into his eyes, robbing sight and air and replacing them with something choking, foul, and opaque-_

**take it take it TAKE IT**

- _his hands, his heart, his spirit are shackled and he's being dragged down down down into something lightless and void, any sense of direction gone and any sense of autonomy stolen, he's bound by this rot and grime, arrested wholly and frozen dead  into an unnatural state, forced and molded into the wrong shape and puppeted along to a script that he can't follow_ -

**stop fighting it and take it**

_-he wants to cry out but he doesn't have a mouth anymore, or a face, he is nothing, can do nothing, he's gone and replaced completely by-_

Hot metal floods his mouth and Callum yanks back, terrified and lost and haunted by the memory of that spell, that face talking about destinies. In a half-wild knee-jerk reach for comfort, he casts about for the air, any air - a breeze, a gust, a sigh - and finds the racing in-and-out breaths of a treefrog a mile away, the quick-paced measure of a bird gliding high above, the slow-soft air of a turtle surfacing a meter behind.

The disciplined breathing of four sets of lungs half a mile away, approaching at an alarming rate towards the stream.

_Oh fuck_.

\---

The soft warm windboy leaves in a hurry, but his soul energies are gentle and unharried and bump gently against his own arcanum, which means it is safe to stay asleep a bit longer. The fast moongirl is also still asleep, and the bestboy had often (loudly) agreed that she was the leader, even though the magic has said multiple times that she does not connect to the Burden. But bestboy is kind, and has a soul like dust and safety, so it is acceptable to forgive what he says and let moongirl take the reigns.

And moongirl is still asleep.

He tucks his head under his wing and commits to her example.

Then a bird sings, and a lizard runs past, and the grass bows and shifts in a breeze, and the breeze itself is so _happy_ and free, nothing like that desolate vacuum cave from the day before, and it fills his heart and lungs with a vigor to run and play - so he opens his eyes and does.

Moongirl’s cloth thing - and he knows her name is ‘Rayla’, but ‘moongirl’ is _much_ better, he is an expert at naming things - is full of holes, and he pokes them and tears at them and the threads stick to his scales! And his teeth! And it is exciting and clingy and fun and fast! And he jumps and whirls around and tears at it with his claws to show it who’s in charge, and the cloth rips so satisfyingly, resistance and then sudden give, and he feels very strong and ferocious!

And then he notices his hunger, which he remembers from yesterday, so he drops the cloth that smells like moongirl and shuffles over to the bounty of berries moongirl had brought from the waterstream in the east, and picks out the darkest and bluest, because those are the ones that taste the best and make his scales thrum with charge.

Moongirl stirs a bit while he eats, but does not wake, so he ignores her. He cannot connect to her magical core the way he can to birds and breezes and storms - she is of a different facet of nature, subject to a different force than his own - but he can feel the boundaries of her arcanum and it is fuller than before, healed from her encounter with his lightning, and it makes him happy. He had not _meant_ to wound her or force her to draw on her core - but all is well, as it seems the moon must have shone a bit more brightly; the red blisters of yesterday have smoothened and become fainter, and her core sings out the contented thrum of an arcanum well-nurtured.

A soft gust blows through the copse, and he turns to it, listening. The wind speaks of birds and insects, of growth in the east and lingering death in the west, of oncoming humidity and possible plans for a cheeky rainfall, and of two direct subjects and two peripherals who steadily make their way to a common water-fount. And it says-

- _panic-_

and

- _fear_ -

and

- _angerFURYterrorrunningrunningrunningCATCHITgetawaygetawayohnoYES!NO!-_

Azymondias summons pure spitting static, spreads his wings, and flies.

\---

In retrospect, he should have just finished putting all of his clothes on. If he was going to die, at least he could’ve done it wearing blue. Mom had always said he pulled blue off well. Instead, true to form, he ends up grabbing one shoe - one, just one, two would have been excessive apparently, now he’s down to one damn shoe - throws on his pants, belt, and shirt, and starts booking it through the thick underbrush as if he’ll actually make any progress before they-

“What’s tha-”

“Why is it-”

He’s so _slow_ , has to lift his legs so high up just to get past the buttressed roots of the taller trees, and there are logs and fallen branches and vines and all sorts of ferns, and he remembers where everything is, he remembers everything, but just because his mind can pinpoint where the next fallen log is going to be doesn’t mean he can physically lift his feet any faster or pump his legs any harder.

Something shoots past him, buries itself deep in the trunk of a tree he doesn’t glance at, and impossibly, his foot tangles on a vine that his memory says wasn’t there the first time he passed through, and when he inevitably loses his balance and stumbles forward on his hands and knees, more vines and ferns and branches rush up to ensare his limbs and trap him. He tries to push himself back up, but his feet keep slipping, his ankle is tied by a vine that _shouldn’t be doing that, how is it doing that_ \- and to his growing horror, his left hand is steadily sinking into the mud, long thick leaves wrapped around it to keep it in place. He grabs at it with his right hand, looks for a way to get leverage, lift it out, get the hell away from here, but-

-he glances behind him-

\- and misses the tip of a pointed blade by inches.

Oh man, oh fuck, he’s so dead, Rayla’s going to be so _pissed_.

The blade is held in the steady, balanced hand of a dark-skinned elf with thin pointed horns and an unwieldy backpack, and behind her he can see four more elves, some armed and some not, all with similar guarded expressions, as if waiting to see if he’ll reveal an unprecedented ability to escape this complete hellmaze of a situation. He waits too, just in case.

“You should not be here,” says the elf holding the blade to his neck. Her face is as unyielding as her sword grip, voice even and rhythmic in its delivery. “You’re an aberration in this land, a flaw in its fabric.”

He opens his mouth. “That’s not very nice of you-” he starts, because it’s the kind of thing he’d say to annoy Rayla, and maybe if he just talks as if she were there he’ll end up summoning her out of the air itself. The elf’s eyes widen when he speaks, and behind her the others shuffle and twitch, one actually reaching for something on their back. It’s a reaction of bad startlement, and as he watches, one of the elves dressed in long pale green robes holds up a sun-kissed hand and makes a fist.

Plants surge to wrap around his knees and elbows, and the hand that had started sinking into the ground shoots down even deeper into the mud as the earth itself begins drawing it in. It’s completely terrifying, and he thrashes as dirt and root conspire to bury him.

The first elf with the blade is staring at him with an extra air of caution about her, which he patently doesn't care about because he's busy trying to choose between screaming and begging for help. “Stop moving, blood drinker” she instructs, but he can't, it's going to swallow him whole and he's freaking out, can't she see he's freaking out?!

The elf in the green unclenches her hand by a fraction, and the ground stops interring him, vines loosening just enough to let blood flow. With a panicked sort of bemusement, he notices his hands are completely numb, and he wiggles his fingers a bit to try to ease the pins and needles.

It’s not a popular move, because the robed elf twitches again, and all at once Callum is pissed the hell off. “Literally what do you think I’m going to do to you?” he spits. “I’m neck-deep in dirt and all of you have swords or-or weird magic stuff on me. I _had_ some soap. That’s where I’m at right now.”

“You reek of dark magic and drank blood in a sacred river, and then have the audacity to pass yourself off as harmless. Typical.” a pale-haired elf scoffs. She has thick, strong-looking horns and dust-red facial markings sweeping down her brow, giving her a perpetual scowl. She looks like she could fold him in half with a look. “Like you said, he doesn’t belong here. His death is an easy decision.

“Woah, woah, wait-” The green-clad elf draws her coak over her face to cover her eyes, and a tall elf near the back with thick hair and gold markings turns around, as if unable or unwilling to witness whatever it is that the sword lady is going to do to him. He seconds the sentiment wholeheartedly. “I haven’t even _done_ anything!”

“The blood of one of your victims is dripping from your lips as we _speak_ ,” says green cloak elf, and the large-horned scowling elf snorts and shakes her head.

His hands aren’t free enough to touch his mouth, but he can feel the clumsy soreness of a tongue recently bitten, can remember the feeling of blood flooding his mouth when that darkness filled the hollows of his bones and prodded him to seek refuge in the air, thirteen minutes ago in the stream. He opens his mouth to tell them that they’re mistaken, it’s all a big misunderstanding, he’s not some _monster_ , but the elf with the sword is raising the blade high, the ropes holding her backpack falling apart as something inside moves, lurches, breaks free, and Callum is going to die, right here, in a land denied to his people for generations, wearing one shoe and no blue.

He closes his eyes because he’s afraid.

So he doesn’t see when Zym bursts through the thick canopy and crash-lands in front of him, wings flared and mouth blazing electric and teeth flashing white at the group of wide-eyed, shocked elves.

\---

There’s no pain, no ache, no exhaustion - everything feels as if it’s working right, energy resonant and singing and happy, vibrant from an entire night of the moon’s kindness. It’s hands down the most suspicious shit to happen this entire journey, up to and including the whole deal with the shady dark mage girl who went and turned chains into fucking snakes, TWICE, and if it didn’t feel so good to just lay as still as possible and revel in the lack of pain, she’d have ripped up camp and set off hours ago. But it does, so she keeps her eyes shut and tries to prolong this rare instance of peace.

Consciousness ebbs and flows. There comes a moment, at a point when the sun has warmed her skin for too long for it to be anything other than mid-morning, where her body physically can’t take anymore rest, and she reluctantly opens her eyes and commences her post-wake ritual of hissing at the sun. Bright, bright bastard. Once her eyes have adjusted to the absolutely excessive retina-searing brilliance of a cloudless day, she looks over to where Callum is surely keeping watch, because heavens knows she’ll kill him if he let the prince go unguarded-

She blinks.

He’s not there.

When Runaan had first taken her up as his apprentice, she’d gotten long, careful months of training in how to keep her head cool at all times. She immediately forgets all of it.

Because Callum is gone.

And, as she darts from the spot where Callum had last sat, sketchbook abandoned next to the pile of satchels, waist-packs, and cloak, she comes to the heart-freezing realization that Zym, the lost dragon prince she’d sworn her life and magic to over a fortnight ago, is also gone.

They’re both fucking gone.

Because she was sleeping.

_Suspicious, it was_ suspicious-!

The months of composure-training were accompanied by lessons in how to track creatures both magical and nonmagical, and she falls back on those with a combination of diligence and dread. No scuff marks, no raised earth, no broken branches or blood to indicate a fight - plus she’d have woken up, she’d been comfortable but not _that_ comfortable, dirt’s still dirt - and Callum’s sketchbook looks like it’d been gently placed down, not thrown as it would have in a forced kidnapping. She takes two quick breaths and plunges down into her core where the memory of the moon chimes high, sinks into the white-flow of moonbeams and silver-light, and spreads her awareness as thin as it’ll go. She opens her eyes.

The same campsite is now overlaid by a series of branching lights, sparks concentrating in clusters around tree branches, stones, and vines - the essential magic that runs through anything and everything, forming the underlying structure upon which Xadia itself is built on. The marks on her face burn as she scans the campsite - she’s channeling an admittedly stupid amount of energy into her eyes, and it’s been a long time since she’s done this, she’s supposed to be careful but-

_-they’re gone_ -

-she really doesn’t have a lot of time.

Whiteblue swirls scatter, jitter, and spasm near where she’d last seen Zym. _That must be his energy trace_ , she thinks, studying it intently with watering eyes. _It’s a lot less stable than I’d expect from a dragon - but he’s a baby still, a hatchling, of course it isn’t steadied yet._

In fact, she realizes, it’s a _good_ thing Zym’s energies are so erratic. The scintillating, back-and-forth electric swirls and zaps produced by his core are unique, unlike anything she’s observed before - there’s no way she’d confuse it with the energy inherently present in a breeze or a storm. Even if a zephyr blows through, even if a bird or even another skywing elf comes along, the energy signatures won’t blend or fade or become confusing to pick out, because Zym’s trace is just that unique.

She blinks salt and sting out of her burning eyes, picks up the cloak, satchel, waist-packs, and sketchbook, and unsheathes one blade. With her other hand, she picks out a purple-black berry, puts it in her mouth, and braces herself.

The juice is acid, burning and painful, and as she swallows she can feel it shooting down her veins into her heart, her pulse quickening, her breaths deepening. The burn in her eyes is supplanted by the burn on her tongue.

Her magic, dammed by daylight and sunshine, breaks open and flows freely.

She scales a tree and pushes magic into her eyes and hunts down her prince’s trace, leaping from branch to branch, violet eyes glowing hot-white with stored moon magic. She won’t be able to find Callum like this - he’s human, he doesn’t have a trace, doesn’t have a core - but she can find Zym, _must_ find Zym. She refuses to let herself think otherwise.

_(coward_ )

Pulse too fast, magic too free, and heart too fractured, Rayla shoots off into the canopy, following the swirldance of her future King’s soul-energy and praying against reason that she finds them in one piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


End file.
